


With knives and pens we made our plight

by Liquid_Lyrium



Series: Reversi Omens [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Blood, Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), Divination, Fallen Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fortune Telling, M/M, Mild Blood, More gross divination with Aztarioth, Other, Prompt Fill, Rescue, Reverse Omens, Rituals, Scene: Soho 1967 (Good Omens), haruspex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27331024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liquid_Lyrium/pseuds/Liquid_Lyrium
Summary: Do you know, my dear, I do believe you have Andromeda imprinted on your skin? It isn’t quite right to be the Milky Way. In five thousand odd years, somehow I’d never noticed.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Reversi Omens [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1979378
Comments: 15
Kudos: 66
Collections: Racket’s 13 Days of Halloween





	With knives and pens we made our plight

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt of _ritual_. Some mild but non-explicit references to the art of haurspicy (liver-reading). Big ups to Isle of Solitude for help with the title - which is a song lyric from Black Veil Brides. This is essentially unbetad but I think I picked out most of the errors in here.

Aztarioth had nearly everything a demon could want to be content. A bookshop full of treasures mundane and magic alike, and a wine collection he'd been curating since the year 566. The only thing he lacked for on this particular night was company. He'd just settled in to reread what was ostensibly F. Scott Fitzgerald's sequel to _The Beautiful and the Damned;_ though _The Martyr in the Mirror_ was, like most of Scott's works, half plagiarized from Zelda's diaries. Just as he was getting to the really interesting (and homoerotically charged) verbal sparring match between Gloria and Dorothy, something prickled Aztarioth's senses. Something occult in his city.

He'd heard rumors of some Satanists looking for a demon, but he'd paid it no mind. Aztarioth didn’t go out of his way to avoid Satanists, but he certainly didn’t invite them onto his doorstep. Either they were playing games—which sometimes, admittedly, he would crash while drunk for a lark (usually at a certain angel’s urging and bad influence)—and nothing would come of it… or they were a determined lot and he’d meet them eventually anyway. No reason really to go sticking his beak into their business unless expressly invited. But this… This was powerful enough that the city’s bones creaked, old and ancient. Like the cruel warning of an arthritic joint before a devastating storm. His tongue soaked in the warm, familiar fresh-dead taste of the occult. A comforting mouthfeel that spoke to his hollow bones. A sort of futile hunger that was never quite satisfied. There was the taste of something gold on the back of his tongue. Something warm. Like a sliver of a tangerine. Wet and crisp and sharp. Tart and somehow sweet, even as the tip of his tongue recoiled behind his teeth from the sting of it.

It melted away in a flash, leaving his mouth cold, as if he’d been sucking on iron. Aztarioth sighed and pulled off his glasses, setting aside the manuscript.

_Really… what on Earth have you gotten yourself into?_

He walked over to a heavy door encrusted in evil looking runes—mostly for aesthetic purposes as he never wanted to risk the shop looking anything as awful as _homely_ —and surveyed a series of dark jars set up like the world’s most macabre pickling operation. Aztarioth hovered his fingers between two jars before he pulled a particularly large one down and tested the heft. The fleshy contents of the jar squished wetly against the sides like a large pepper suspended in brine. Aztarioth considered the container, and then he smashed the jar with all his might onto the floor, leaving a lump of viscera at his feet and a fractal pattern of glass across the tile.

The demon carefully crouched down, perched on the balls of his feet. “Thank you for your service, dear chap. Hm. So what's the news… ah, what’s this…? A lie…? No, that can’t be right. Danger… well, obviously." Aztarioth used his talons to pry apart the goat’s liver lobe by lobe, inspecting the features and structures there. “Magic, oh _well_ spotted. Tell me something _useful_ why don’t you—” Aztarioth froze, every ethereal feather standing to attention. He stared up at the ceiling and closed his eyes, a deep frown etched across his features. _Still? Still, after all this time? I thought you finally understood. Were you lying to me this whole time?_ Aztarioth shook his head and eyed the spiraling arms of the glass critically. _No, not lying. Never lies—he’s an angel, after all. He just never said…_

“Bollocks!” Aztarioth rose to his feet and ran towards the door, grabbing his long coat on the way out.

\---

It was a bit like coming home as he approached the abandoned warehouse. The feeling of infernal energy warmed him from the soles of his feet upward. Aztarioth sighed and cracked his neck. It was tempting to stretch out his wings and catch the heat like a midnight thermal, but there wasn’t time for that. There was another heat here. Something bright. A star-hot, magnesium flame he would not see extinguished.

He paused and ran his hand over the doorway. _Ah, well. They wanted a demon, didn’t they? I’ll be happy to provide._ He smiled to himself a little cruelly, and swished the long tail of his coat to get into proper character. Aztarioth paused, looking at his gore-spattered talons at his fingertips. He shrank them back to something normal and human. Clean—albeit with the unpleasant smell of antiseptic. While it was a good look to impress humans, it was absurdly tacky and he’d never hear the end of it if he was caught relying on such a cheap tactic.

The occult energy in the building was such that Aztarioth could have found it by smell alone. The chanting and the heavy incense, however, was also a dead giveaway. He let his hair shiver forth into something stiffer, wilder. A spiky mane of feathers. The hallway sharpened into hyper focus as his eyes grew rounder and larger.

Aztarioth kicked in the door, disappointed but unsurprised to see half a dozen figures draped in black (only slightly less naked than Adam and Eve when they left the garden) muttering ominously around a chalk circle with a seventh entirely nude man clad in only cow and goat’s blood (significantly more naked than Adam and Eve at their departure) holding a silver dagger above the chest of the circle’s single occupant. A familiar figure lying prone and helpless against the cruel sigils on the floor (exactly as nude as Adam and Eve at their creation, save for the glasses). 

Several things happened at once. One of the attendants—clad in nothing but a black velour curtain draped over her shoulders—dropped her candle with a shriek and the chanting abruptly ceased as all the assembled humans looked towards the door. A moment later her neighbor also started shrieking as the fabric _(really, not even a proper cape? A curtain of all things…)_ caught fire.

Four of the mostly-nude humans darted out the room past Aztarioth, and he smiled his best unsettling smile. A moment later he did his best impression of a bird trying to regard the world upside down while still wearing his human skin. It was a very good impression.

The leader—at least he assumed it was the leader, based on the increased degree of nudity—fell to his knees while his remaining followers clutched one another, and threw themselves to the ground. Their captive, however, barely had the decency to turn his head and look at his rescuer.

“Oh, merciless lord, we worship ye! We have captured this angel to bring unto you! We were about to cut out its heart! Please accept this great sacrifice—”

“Yes, yes,” Aztarioth waved a hand dismissively. “Praise be to the dark master. Let’s dispense with all that shall we? I will tell you what is going to happen now.”

The man promptly shut up. _Thank darkness. That almost never works._

“You are going to leave. This angel _is_ a great gift,” he let his voice drop lower into a threatening tone, “but dangerous.” He glared through Corviel’s sunglasses. “You will have your richest, deepest desires for this offering,” Aztarioth pronounced, expending a bit of demonic influence. _That_ finally got the angel’s attention, and he sat up in the circle, apparently not as bound and helpless as he looked at first glance.

“You didn’t have to do _that!”_ Corviel said, sounding aghast.

Aztarioth glared at him again. _This is entirely your fault. Don’t blame me that they’re going to get exactly what they wanted._ “Yes, you’ll have whatever you like best. Now go… before I eat his heart in the marketplace.“ Aztarioth snapped upwards and impelled the remaining Satanists to run out the door. Hopefully to be arrested for public nudity before getting their just and cosmic rewards.

Aztarioth looked over Corviel’s new haircut, a long Beatles-esque bob down to his chin. At the candyfloss strands of hair woven through red. _He’s been out in the sun again._ He let his eyes linger at that pale throat. At the silver freckles that got denser and denser as one got closer to the place where a heart might live. If a heart _was_ there to be eaten or carved out. Where the occult patterns around them were pushing his celestial nature closer to the surface. They spiraled over Corviel’s entire body, celestial arms reaching out from the source, thinner and thinner. _Do you know, my dear, I do believe you have Andromeda imprinted on your skin? It isn’t quite right to be the Milky Way. In five thousand odd years, somehow I’d never noticed._

“What are _you_ doing here?” Corviel finally hissed as soon as they were alone. His rising blush caught in the candle light. Enough that it brought out one of the few golden freckles on the angel’s neck. He pushed his sunglasses up to rest in impossibly fluffy bangs, revealing the blazing stars beneath. Aztarioth tried not to let himself get hypnotized by the sunspots drifting along like ocean liners crossing the Pacific.

“Stopping _you_ from getting into trouble. Obviously,” Aztarioth let his feathers ruffle indignantly before he let his features shift back into something properly human. Or as properly human as he could be.

“How did you even know to show up? This is a private event! 'S exclusive!!" If it weren’t so serious, Aztarioth would laugh at the angel’s indignation. He couldn't even enjoy Corviel's nudity right now in good conscience. Which he wasn't supposed to have.

"I work in Soho. I hear things,” he said simply. The silence settled thickly between them until Corviel finally lifted a brow and Aztarioth relented, “ …Also I read the entrails of a goat, but listen, that's not important right now. I see you were clearly setting up a…” Aztarioth faltered before he settled on the diplomatic word,”...caper, to attain eternal damnation."

Corviel opened his mouth to deny it, despite standing naked as a jaybird in the middle of a chalk circle, surrounded by Leviathan crosses and worse symbols, but Aztarioth held up a hand to stall him.

"Starling you can't. I won't let you! It'll destroy you completely, you'd never be the same! You haven't the first idea what it's like to be cut off from Her. It's not a game! I won't let you come over to my side. You'll regret it forever." _Sometimes I hate that you’re the worst angel I know! Your lot is supposed to be all about obedience, so why can’t you just do as I say?!_

"You told me what you think, a hundred and five years ago,” Corviel snapped his fingers peevishly and instantly he was clad in black trousers and a loose tunic with bell sleeves and a deep v that covered up far too many freckles for Aztarioth's taste. The circular glasses dropped down onto the bridge of his nose again, dimming the room almost as much as his frown. Aztarioth didn't even blink away the green spots dancing in front of him. The after image of those eyes that seemed to linger for centuries.

"And I haven't changed my mind after six thousand years!!"

"You don't have to protect my virtue anymore, I'll be fine, really."

"Actually I rather think I do." Aztarioth pulled out a sleek and humble leather sheath from a pocket concealed inside his jacket. Hardly longer than his hand. Something he'd carried with him every day, back in the thirteenth century. Back when he'd discovered the charm of shaping one's own quills into proper writing tools. He held it out above the lines of chalk separating them. The temperature in the room ticked up by several degrees. Less a cozy fireside evening and closer to approaching a blacksmith's forge. There was a hesitation before Corviel spoke.

"That's Hellfire."

"From the deepest pit." Aztarioth solemnly extended the penknife with both hands. "Don't go pulling it out of the case."

Corviel reached out, and Aztarioth knew he was feeling his way blindly. Even with those cursed, tinted lenses. Pale fingertips drew back. As if the hands that once shaped the stars found it too hot to touch.

"This is the real thing." It's not a question. "I…" Corviel stumbled over the words as he finally, gingerly curled his fingers around the gift. "Thank you."

Aztarioth made a face as he pulled his hands away from the one thing in the universe he was unquestionably immune to, transmuting it into his greatest weakness on the spot. "Don't say that."

"You're right, better not." There was a long silence. Corviel carefully tucked the knife away. The angel stood, looking chastened, his hand rubbing along the back of his neck. “...Lift home? I assume you walked.”

Aztarioth gave a thin sort of smile. This was a familiar ritual all its own. "I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble."

There was the achingly familiar glimpse of silver teeth. Like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. "Now what sort of demon would that make you? You're always causing trouble, you rotter." Aztarioth laughed and turned to go back the way he came. Corviel let out a stuttered sort of noise. "Hey, wait! Where are you going?"

Aztarioth turned back and lifted his brows. "Hm?"

Corviel gestured rather grandly towards the circle at his feet. "I can't go anywhere while I'm stuck in here."

"Really?" said Aztarioth mildly, "I'm afraid I hadn't noticed." And with that the demon turned again and headed out the door, smirking at the increasingly indignant and outraged shouts from his hereditary enemy behind him.

Once he rounded the corner in the hallway Aztarioth pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time. While time itself was meaningless, in that they had oodles of it, boredom was probably the worst torture one could inflict on a supernatural being. Particularly Corviel. Aztarioth wound his watch and nodded, feeling completely satisfied with thwarting his dearly detested rival.

 _Twenty minutes ought to be enough to impress the virtues of patience, I should think._ Aztarioth snapped the pocket watch shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Aztarioth has a nasty habit of stealing unpublished manuscripts and sequels from famous authors throughout the ages bc he is an absolute villain. His taste is clearly questionable here ~~The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald are both overrated, don't @ me lol~~


End file.
